My goal: to develop and refine the healthiest but still most kid-acceptable ur-bread recipe I can manage. When the bread gets too brown, my kids get suspicious. (And yet they still aren’t wise to the green zucchini-skin-colored flecks in their favorite “spice cake”…)

Starting with the recipe for Oat Flour Bread on page 104, I made some adjustments: The recipe called for 5 1/2 cups of regular flour and 1 cup of oat flour. This isn’t near whole grain-y enough for me, so instead I used 4 cups regular unbleached flour, 1 cup white whole wheat flour, 1 cup oat flour, 1/4 cup flaxseed meal, and 1/4 cup oat bran. I also reduced the salt from 1 1/2 tbs to only 1 tbs. And added a little sugar. (Hopefully not enough to kill the yeast or anything, just maybe 1 tbs or so. I added it for the deeply scientific reason that I had about 1 tbs of sugar left in the bag and I’m tired of moving it around, so I tossed it into the dough.) Other than that, I left it as it was.

GROWNUP VERDICT: This is a very nice bread–not the kind to make you take a bite and swoon like the earlier version, but really nice nonetheless. Just enough “other” stuff to give it a very slight whole grainy taste, but not enough to have that This Is Seriously Healthy Whole Grain Bread thing going. The reduced salt was a very good thing; the added sugar also seemed to add a little sweetness to the final product. We might be able to increase the oat/whole wheat proportions just a little against the plain white and still sell it to the kids, but for now this is a good start. Only other thing I’d change: I followed the recipe and baked it the full 45 minutes, which gave a really hard brown crust, something my husband and I aren’t crazy about, and the interior of the bread wasn’t nearly as moist as previous loaves. Next time I’ll only go 30 or 35 minutes, which should be plenty.

KID VERDICT: I sent a ham sandwich to school today. Most of it got eaten, part of it came home. (“I ran out of time because I was chatting,” was the reason. Since he never uses the word “chatting,” I’m assuming a teacher has been getting on his case about it.) Once home this starving boy whom I obviously never feed (not) gobbled down the rest with great gusto. He didn’t mind the heavier crust, and he didn’t mind the brown flaxseed flecks in the bread; he liked it. So I think we’re onto something here.

There’s enough dough in the refrigerator for at least two more loaves of Something from this bread; I’ll probably try a foccacia and maybe another cinnamon loaf since that seemed to make the kids extremely happy.

I wish I could find a way to reconcile trying to lose those last 15 lbs. and experimenting with new recipes, especially when my recipes are starting to actually work out well with greater consistency…